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Plato and the Method of Hippocrates Mansfeld, Jaap Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1980; 21, 4; Periodicals Archive Online Pg

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Plato and the Method of Hippocrates Mansfeld, Jaap Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1980; 21, 4; Periodicals Archive Online Pg Plato and the Method of Hippocrates Mansfeld, Jaap Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1980; 21, 4; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 341 Plato and the Method of Hippocrates Jaap Mansfeld I IPPOCRATES, deprived of the books of the Corpus, but in­ H vested with the doctrines which tradition ascribes to him, does not live a shadowy existence .... Plato and Meno give enough details so as to make clear the outlines of Hippocrates' medicine." Thus Ludwig Edelstein in a critical review (first pub­ lished in 1939) of attempts by some scholars in the 1930s to as­ cribe certain treatises in the Corpus Hippocraticum to Hippocrates himself. 1 According to Edelstein, the Corpus does not contain one work by Hippocrates, since none squares with the testimony of Plato and Meno. Recently, however, the distinguished Hippocratic scholar Wesley D. Smith has in a way turned Edelstein's statement against this negative position: accepting Edelstein's points con­ cerning what is said by Plato and Meno as conditions that have to be satisfied if a treatise in the Corpus is to be ascribed to Hippoc­ rates, he then points to a treatise which, in his view, fits.2 The Corpus contains a major work in which, he argues, can be found both the aetiology of diseases attributed to Hippocrates in the abstract from Meno's History of Medicine preserved in the Anony­ mus Londinensis (5.35ff), a compilation of the first or second century, and the method attributed to him by Plato in Phaedrus (269Eff). Meno, Aristotle's pupil, says that Hippocrates explained diseases as products of the gases that result when digestion goes wrong. Plato attributes to Hippocrates the use of his own method of inquiry, viz., the dialectical method of the 'collection' and 'divi­ sion' of the things to which concepts refer. He also writes that Hippocrates studied the nature of the body "not without the nature of the whole." The meaning of the words 'the whole' is disputed. Some scholars argue that the whole of the body is meant, i.e., that whoever practises a division of body should begin by studying 1 "The Genuine Works of Hippocrates," repro in Ancient Medicine (Baltimore 1967) 133ff; the quotation is from 144. Edelstein argued against Deichgraber, Pohlenz, and Nestle. 2 The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca and London 1979) 44ff [hereafter 'SMITH']. 341 342 PLATO AND THE METHOD OF HIPPOCRATES 'body' in its full extension and then divide this 'whole' into parts or species. Others argue that 'the whole' here means the whole of nature. Now Smith has done three things: (1) he has brilliantly adduced a passage in a very interesting treatise in the Corpus, Regimen, according to which the nature of man as a whole (or in general: 7Uivro~ rpV(JIV av()pwnov) must be studied, as to its com­ ponent parts and the factors influencing those parts, in relation to the natural environment and indeed to the whole universe (roD OAOV KO(JPOV);3 (2) in the beginning of the same chapter, he has found a reference to a sort of collection and division;4 (3) finally, he has managed to find another passage (3.74 init.) in which (Meno's) gases cause disease. Hippocrates, then, would be the author of Regimen. Yet there are compelling arguments against this identification. To start with (3): the passage is only an incidental point in the treatise; but if Regimen really had been the work Meno had in mind, one would expect the gases theory to be the dominant aeti­ ology of this treatise, which it is not. As to (2), the presence of a notion of collection and division is itself disputable,S and, as also in the case of (3), one would expect again that if Plato had thought of Regimen, a method of collection and division would be the method of the treatise, which it is not. As to (1) and (2) taken to­ gether, it is surely unsatisfactory that Smith exploits the ambiguity that scholars have seen in Plato's 'nature of the whole' by having it both ways. The Corpus, moreover, contains a group of interrelated treatises of outstanding quality and originality which for emotional and other reasons one would much prefer to ascribe to Hippocrates before, say, the eclectic and idiosyncratic Regimen-works such as Epidemics I and III, Prognosticon, Airs Waters Places. 6 Their attribution, however, cannot be proved on grounds of internal evidence, or quality, alone, while such external evidence as we 3 Vict. 1.2. For the eclecticism of Vict. see infra n.65. 4 Here the author speaks of yvwval Kai Jlayvwval-according to Smith 46, "know together and know separately." 5 This is argued, cogently I believe, by Robert loly in the paper referred to infra n.66, in the context of a general criticism of Smith's study. loly also makes the point about 3.74. 6 The classic statement of this case is K. Deichgraber, Die Epidemien und das Corpus Hippocraticum (Berlin 1933, 197t2). loly (infra n.66) deals admirably with this point; see also his article "Hippocrates of Cos," Dictionary of Scientific Biography 6 (New York 1972) 418 ff. For the "preuve d' authenticite par Ie genie" see C. Lichtenthaeler in M. D. Grmek, ed., Hippocratica (Actes 3me Call. Hippoc. Paris 1978: Paris 1980) 353. JAAP MANSFELD 343 possess has up till now proved insufficient. From external evidence such as the ancient biographical accounts of Hippocrates,7 which contain elements that it would be hypercritical to doubt (some are confirmed by the epigram said to have been inscribed on his tomb), 8 we may infer that Hippocrates practised medicine in the regions where the observations recorded in Epid. I and III (and also in II, IV, VI) were made. But this is not enough to prove authenticity; these circumstantial data provide only a possibility or at most probability, but do nothing to clear away the main obstacle to identification. This obstacle is the uncertainty about Plato's mean­ ing in Phaedrus. If we opt for 'the whole' in the sense of the body as a whole, to be investigated by means of collection and division, then no link with the above-mentioned treatises can be confidently established-at least none so far has. 9 If we opt fo-r the whole of nature, there is no such link either, for the treatises at issue are concerned not with nature. as a whole but with the environment only. There is of course no trace of Meno's aetiology of gases and digestion in these treatises either, in any case nothing that would enable us to say that such a theory, in the form presented by our abstract, is their dominant aetiology. This, however, is less serious. Anonymus Londinensis indeed cited 'Aristotle' (i.e., Meno) for the attribution of this aetiology, but the author (or perhaps rather the lecturer he listened to) explicitly disagrees with Meno's point of view and says that Hippocrates himself taught other things. For these true Hippocratic doctrines he refers to theories derived from 7 C( Deichgraber (supra n.6) 147f, 162, and Joly (infra n.66). For Apollodorus' floruit of Hippocrates (ca 420 B.C.) see F. Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik (Berlin 1902) 295f, rather than his comment ad FGrHist 244F73. 8 Anth.Pal. 7.135: eeaaaM~ 'br.7wKparl1~, Krfjo<; yevo~, evOac5e KeiraI, (/Joi{lov ano Pi(l1~ aOavarov yeyadJ~, nAeiara rp6nara v6awv ar1aa~ onAo/~ 'YyIeil1~, 156c;av eAwv nOAA';v ou ruxa1, aMa reXval. W. Peek, Griech. Vers-Inschr. I ad no. 418, dates the epigram "V./IV. Jh." If it was indeed inscribed on Hippocrates' tomb, it cannot have been much older than ca 380 B.C. The first two lines tell us that Hippocrates, by birth a Coan and from a family claiming descent from Apollo (i.e., the Asclepiads), lies here 'a Thessalian'. This suggests an honorific burial; cf. my remarks in Mnemosyne SER. IV 33 (1980) 86f. 9 The point of (e.g.) Epid. VI 3.12 is much narrower; cf. H. Diller, "Ausdrucksformen des methodischen Bewusstseins in den hippokratischen Epidemien" (1964), repro in Kleine Schriften zur antiken Medizin (Berlin 1973) 106ff, 120-33. 344 PLATO AND THE METHOD OF HIPPOCRATES treatises that we can still identify, sc., Nature of Man (to be safely attributed to Hippocrates' son-in-law Polybus)lO and Diseases I (not a Co an, but a Cnidian work). He also seems to imply that 'Aristotle's' use of the term 'gas' is mistaken and that Hippocrates himself spoke of air, pneuma. 11 I conclude that, in Anonymus, there is already a 'Hippocratic Question' surprisingly similar to that of today. But even if we ignore this aspect of Anonymus' exposition and take into account only the section he disagrees with, viz., what 'Aristotle' says, we are still faced with a major problem. The first part of Anonymus is not a substantial piece quoted verbatim from Meno's History of Medicine falsely ascribed to Aristotle, but a later abstract from this work which shows the hand of a Stoic or at least of a person who found it very natural to use concepts that are Stoic in origin. 12 A relatively late date, then, should be assigned the abstract from Meno used by Anonymus (or possibly his lecturing source) for his compilation. It is impossible to gauge the extent to which Meno's original text has been modi­ fied, but one can be certain that it has been rather seriously rewrit­ ten. Consequently, I submit that it is methodologically unsound to take Anonymus' 'Aristotle' au pied de la lettre and on this basis to look (or, with Edelstein, refuse to look) for works in the Corpus by Hippocrates himself.
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